Wayfaring Stranger
by Gamblers Choice
Summary: With little memory of her past, Sakura travels a much different path. Only briefly aware of a red-haired brother she must re-unite with, and yet wary of the snake uncle she must find and put an end to, Sakura will pick up the pieces of her past and build her future by the side of her team, of the all-seeing clan that supports her, and through the wisdom of the beast within her.


It was ludicrously simple.

And yet, absurdly difficult at the same time.

Sakura thought, her apple green eyes scowling with disdain towards the offensive kunai, which glittered an extraordinary green in the first light of dawn.

To throw a kunai, a small, yet undoubtedly aerodynamic weapon, to fling it in just the right manner, at the right trajectory, with the right strength and speed, so that it would hit that perfect, accursed little red dot every single time with unflinching accuracy. That was the easy part. That was ludicrously simple, and she could do it half-asleep.

The real game changer was when you formed this kunai with your own hands. There was no longer a '_factory standard'_, no trained personal to check it over and insure that the slightest divot wasn't going to result in a boomerang affect and a hole in your stomach. No, it was all you. With your own chakra you formed the mold; you filled and extracted the product, you created it. You held it and felt it pulse beneath your fingers like flowing magma and, felt it flutter, beating like a heart all at once, and yet it was as hard as diamond. You, consequently, were also the one who let it go, loosed it like a arrow from a bow, though when it's a weapon you created from a little piece of yourself, it was a bit more like flinging your hand and expecting a finger to just fly off.

Sakura huffed; her slightly sweaty, pink stained cheeks were plastered with loose strands of pink hair. "Yet when all is said and done I'm always five centimeters off!" she growled and retracted the chakra from her hand, stealing back the glowing green energy from the few tenketsu points that were there. The newly formed hunk of crystal that had rested there, traditionally referred to as a kunai, crumbled to grainy dust in her palm. "I can hit the target with normal kunai, but with my own they always miss!" She grumbled, staring at the target that now greatly resembled a sort of, inverted porcupine, and then groaned before promptly burying her face in her slightly calloused hands. _I don't get it! _She thought, brain fighting on overdrive. _I had all the angles right for the mold; I know for sure I did! I studied all those kunai for days and did drawings and took angles and weighed them and everything! Yet when I make my own there's always something-_

"_No! Stop!"_ That voice, the voice that had sort of, hitchhiked around with her, become a permanent residence and offered up mostly useless, well on the rare occasion useful information since before she cared to remember. Most would no doubt pin the cause of this _'voice'_ to an extreme case of schizophrenia, others just to her being plain crazy, and Sakura? Sakura had neither the time or the knowledge, nor for that matter the wont to care and thus, didn't really give a damn. So, the voice was named Inner Sakura, or Inner for short; and not unlike another blond haired friend she had, Inner never quite shut up. _"You're doing it again Sakura. Stop over thinking stuff so much! Your making my brain hurt!" _Inner carped.

Sakura, silently mourning the loss of any peace of mind she might have had, sighed heavily. _Well sorry Inner. I wasn't aware you even had a brain._ She retorted, her tone dripping with sass. _Plus, I can't exactly help my personality, and if I recall correctly your part of that personality. You know? The one where I think through everything… like, seven or eight times for good measure?_

To her Inners credit, the subconscious… thing didn't even acknowledge her insult. "_Ugh, stop sniveling like a first-year genin already. Your aim is crap because you're thinking too much about this. Remember what Anko-Nee Chan said?"_

Sakura sighed, and grudgingly muttered, disconcertingly at that, into the palms of her hands. "Don't think. Just do."

"Do what?"

Startled, Sakura bolted to her feet, her lithe, lean, ten-year-old body twisted like a cat's so that by the time she had reached her feet, she was completely turned around. Conveniently, as if by second nature now, another crystal kunai had metabolized from her chakra, and rested reassuringly in her tight grip.

Her whole body, in all of its staggering 4'8" glory, was stretched to reach her targets neck; she even stood on tiptoes glued to the ground with chakra. Intense, mercurial eyes twinkled down at her - two swirling pools of silver -and, Sakura recognizing the intruder, scowled, crushing the kunai to dust again.

His voice came, smooth and intense, it demanded attention. Although in her case, it was playfully vain, yet the tone was something she'd come to recognize as indigenous to the strange and confusing creature that was Hyūga Neji. "I'll ask you again, Haruno. Do what?"

She snarled at him, and quickly lobbed a freshly formed kunai in his direction, to which he neatly, and effortlessly sidestepped. "Don't think. Just do." She replied, flatly when he dodged her work.

"Are kunai all you can do?" He quipped, though the slight arch of his perfectly formed eyebrow told her that the insult was rhetorical, and that she should continue explaining.

Just for spite, she answered anyway, but only because she intensely enjoyed exploiting the advantages that came with their intense sort of camaraderie. "No, I could also seal your butt to the toilet seat – permanently." She sneered, before continuing. " But, anyway, I've been trying out my own kunai, I'd like to have use of them before we get assigned our genin teams, but I've been up all morning and-"

"I know, your shouting had the entire compound up by three." He interrupted, lips pulled into a smug sort of grin that made her want to deck him right across his pretty little face.

Sakura bit her cheek to prevent growling at him. She'd learned low ago how to play _this_ game and she refused to give him the pleasure of getting a rise out of her. So, if not a bit ruffled and slightly embarrassed, she continued on as if he hadn't so rudely interrupted her. "-But every time I use my own kunai, it always ends up missing the target by about five centimeters in any direction!" She sighed, only a bit dramatically, and hung her head so that her pink locks, wavy with sweat and loosed from her braid during training, formed a curtain around her face.

Neji, the prodigal bastard he was, didn't even bother to glance behind him. No. Instead he activated his byakugan, and like some freaky owl, looked almost directly behind him. In an instant, the veins had settled once again, the byakugan off, and turned back to her, a smug sort of satisfaction, invisible to the naked, untrained eye, on his face. "Really?" He asked. " You missed it every time?"

She huffed, annoyed that he was questioning the facts she had gathered with her own two, very analytical and very correct eyes. She gestured to the target before looking, "Yes, pompous teme." She growled. " It missed every- oh." Her kunai, the one that was supposed to hit Neji, was buried hilt deep in the target. Spot on, dead, bullseye.

She hadn't thought at all about making, or rather for that matter, throwing the kunai. She had just done it.

Neji hummed for whatever reason, looking particularly self-righteous before taking up his own kunai from the pouch that rested at his hip. "Again." He stated, more command than question, before inserting chakra into a tree – a fake tree mind you – which activated a set of moving, adjustable targets at the Hyūga branch compound training grounds.

"Don't think. Just do."


End file.
